Episode 538: Building Self Confidence in our Children

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Lean in with you.

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You're live.

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday.

Thank you for joining us on Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green family.

Thank you for saying that.

These people who are texting you should be watching the live and not texting you. You know who you are, people.

We have all these texts coming through at the top of my screen.

I'm nervous for those people. Get on the live.

Okay, so how is everyone's week going? Guess what? It is the last day of January.

Wow, this is a thing.

It is a thing because you're not on Facebook much, but I'm going to tell you the memes— is that how— did I say it right? That are going around Facebook are about January and how there's like 531 days in January.

No.

Like, it's like the endless month is what people are saying.

Same length of time as all the other months with 31 days. Am I ruining it?

I'm sorry. I've also heard that January is the Monday of the year.

But Mondays are awesome because it's the start of the week.

I love you and your optimism.

All right, apparently I'm not your target audience.

Well, it's all good. I actually love January, and I want to tell you why, and then I'll move to my topic.

Okay, why do you love January?

I love January because I see celebrate 3 of my closest friends and our son.

So I have birthdays—

I have lots of birthdays to warm my heart in January.

Okay, whatever coping skill works for you, it works. I'm so happy you're happy about it.

And now we move on to Valentine's Day. What are we gonna do for Valentine's Day?

We're going on a date.

Where are we gonna go?

We'll see. Are you planning something for the actual day of the 14th?

Yes. Oh, you're planning something?

I am.

Okay, I'm excited. Okay, on to the topic.

There you go, you got 2 weeks to look forward to.

You're getting major hugs.

Kristen, thank you for getting off the text and joining us on the live. We appreciate that. Tell the other person you were texting to show up here.

Kristen, he was laughing because the text messages— hi Kristen— the text messages were coming up on the screen and Seth was like They're texting.

They should be here.

Stop it! Behave, behave, Seth, behave. Nobody should be here.

They should all be here.

You come if you want to come.

No, you come because she's awesome. Anyways, moving right along.

Anyways, what she missed, what I want to tell her before we move on, is that what I just said is that I like January because I get to celebrate, uh, some very special people, including Kristen and my son.

There you go.

So that is why I love January.

It's all your fault, Kris.

So, every so often in the Whiny Poo's a Mom group, come find it, it's free, it's supportive. Hugs to you, Kristen. It's on Facebook, ask me for an invitation. And every so often I ask questions just to figure out where people's heads are and how I can be more helpful. So every so often I'm gonna ask like, what are you struggling with? Are you struggling? What are you struggling with in parenting? What are you struggling with in marriage? What are you struggling with with yourself? And when I asked about parenting, one of the things that came up was how do you build self-confidence in your kids? And the reason why I took that and ran with it is because it's something that is very— I'm very attuned to in our house for many, many, many reasons. One of which, one of the reasons is because Lily has two older siblings.

Yes.

And as an oldest child, I never have known before Lily what it was like to be a youngest child, right? And now I get to see it through her eyes.

You do.

And Seth can relate because Seth is the youngest, so Seth is probably more helpful to her with this stuff than I am.

You heard it here first.

But I can get in her shoes and I can understand that she has two very overachieving siblings.

Yes.

And to have two very overachieving siblings and then to be number three, it can make you feel down on yourself. And I will hear her say things like, I'm dumb, which she has also heard from me, which I'm careful about.

As in you telling yourself that?

I am not dumb.

You're super smart.

I am very smart. Sometimes when I make a mistake, I'm like, that was so dumb, and she has picked up on that. So So I am fixing that for myself and for Lily.

But you're saying a thing was dumb, not you are dumb as a person. It's an important distinction.

I 100% agree, but I don't want to hear that word out of her mouth, period.

Right, I agree.

So Lily is unique. Lily is special. We're all unique and special. And how can we build Lily's confidence, Ella's confidence— Ella's our other daughter— and your children's confidence, and our own, our own confidence?

It's very important.

So let's talk about it.

Yes.

And I want you to chime in about things that maybe you do for yourself or your kids.

I'm happy to chime in.

And you help me too.

I, I've been told that I do help you all the time, every day. I don't know about that. So here we go.

You know that I give our kids a ton of praise and Max will call me on it.

Yes.

And Max will be like, too much praise, Mom. We had this discussion the other day at the dinner table and he's like, I don't buy it. You give me too much praise.

Well, you got to balance some of that out with some criticism so he believes.

Well, in his case, and on this list of how to build your kids' self-confidence is, um, constructive feedback, not criticism.

So I use the wrong word, right?

So we want to give them constructive feedback, not criticism. And do you know the difference? Because I looked up the difference.

Oh, okay. What is the difference?

Okay, if I can go to it. Okay, constructive feedback aims to help our children to improve by offering specific solution-oriented advice in a supportive manner. Criticism points out flaws and doesn't provide clear guidance and can be delivered negative and judgmental.

Can you give us an example of each? Well, can I put you on the spot?

You can put me on the spot. So let me—

some criticism.

Let's say that Lily is singing Yeah. Okay, so what I can say is, um, so criticism would be, "You're way too quiet, I don't like it at all." That's criticism.

Yep.

So constructive feedback would be, um, "Share your beautiful voice with the people in the back of the auditorium." "Your voice sounds beautiful, however, we'd like to hear more of it." And I should say "and," not "however." And you're going to be judged on projection. So, I love how you sound, and if you could project a little more, you'll get a higher score.

There you go.

So there's a difference.

See the difference?

Huge difference. Okay, um, we want them— we want to encourage their independence, and we have— we have this massively with Lily. Lily's— what is Lily's famous phrase in our house?

All by myself.

Not to be confused with constructive criticism, as in your boss might give you this. Well, constructive feedback.

Yes.

So constructive feedback is okay. Criticism is not okay, right?

There's a difference how you say it, right? It's not supposed to be a negative generalization about the person. It's supposed to be how to improve the performance of the thing.

So you could say to me, um, that sweater is ugly.

I love that sweater.

Or you could say, um, you know, I, I like what you're wearing, but I would rather you wear the blue one. I like the blue one better on you. So there's like ways of saying things.

Yes, praise, correct, praise.

Um, oh, I like that, I like that. Okay, so independence, and I catch myself all the time. So what I could do is I could do it myself or help her to make it go faster. And what I've realized is feedback is a better word. I— yes, I like that, Kristen. What I realize is that I am rushing too often and I want to be more— we've heard me say this before— I want to be more of a beacon of calmness.

Yes.

So I don't need to rush out the door usually. Hopefully, hopefully I've given myself enough time. She wants to do her shoes by herself that she struggles with. She wants to pack her lunch. She wants to have things look a certain way. Her— she wants to fix her hair. She has everything that she wants to do herself, and if she let me help her, it would go faster. But I know that her doing it herself gives her more confidence because she feels good about herself that she did it herself.

Yes.

So we want to encourage the independence. It gives them confidence, and we don't want them to think our love is conditioned on something. We want to offer our kids unconditional love. And I think I need to work on this with our son. I was thinking about the fact that he thinks that— I don't want him to think that I love him because of his accomplishments. I'm proud of his accomplishments, but I don't love him because of his accomplishments.

He did mention the other night at the dinner table, he said, you said something about love, and he said, yeah, but your love is unconditional, Mom, that doesn't count.

I'm glad he said that because He has made sarcastic— sarcasm. I am not good at sarcasm. If you're listening to this and you're my friend, I do— I suck at sarcasm. All it ends up doing is hurting my feelings.

I'm still learning that 20 years later.

So he said something like, well, yeah, I know that you love me because, you know, I'm so good in school, or, you know, because I got another 100. You think I'm so awesome because I got another 100. And I'm like, no, and I have corrected him— that is not why I love him. I think that's awesome, go out and get good grades, I'm proud of you, but I love you because of who you are as a person.

Yeah.

And I, I really, really focus on this one. We want to be good role models, and what I mean by that is we don't want to see our kids tearing down our bodies, ourselves, what we say, what we do. Oh, I should have worked harder. I should have done that differently. We don't want our kids to hear us constantly doubting ourselves because then that makes them do it to themselves. So we want them to hear— we can show them how to have confidence.

Yes, confident role models.

Let them explore new things. Lily is the queen of this.

Yes, she is.

Let me, let me do lacrosse. Let me do lacrosse. Sign me up. You know I want to do it. Oh my God, another thing. Okay, just add it to the list. Now, yes, do I say no? Sometimes I say no. I try not to say no because I want her to explore lots of things. The only thing she hasn't liked is soccer.

She was also young, younger. I think she might have a better experience now. I think it was the first time that she got hit by the ball, or somebody— she was just playing co-ed and the boy pushed her and she didn't like that.

I don't think she's a physical sports kind of girl. Just my two cents. So when they explore new things, they find their passions, they find what they're good at, right?

Right, right.

Okay.

Yes, dance and cheer do not involve hard contact with other people for the purposes of aggression.

Exactly. So comparison is probably the biggest issue with confidence in our, in our house. Um, with our youngest in particular, because when she is down on herself, it is usually because she's comparing herself to a sibling or a friend. So we're trying to teach Lily that we need to compare ourselves to ourselves, and we need to have our own goals, and we need to just try to do better than we're doing and not worry about what other people are doing. You have anything to say about that?

Comparison is the thief of joy.

I knew that's what you were gonna say. Like I literally knew, I knew that was exactly—

I heard me say that quote.

Okay, so we want to jump in and we want to solve their problems, but if we sit back and we ask them questions and we help them figure it out themselves, then that builds their confidence.

That works as a leader of a team as well, right? When people say, what do I think I should— this is the problem, I say, what do you think we should do about it? If you were in charge, what would you do about it? And magically, sometimes they solve their own problems.

Those are good questions.

Yes, thank you.

Well, you can ask your kids those questions too.

Yes.

So what your skills at work with your employees generalize to your kids at home?

100%.

Not to your wife though?

No, not at all. You don't want me to solve your problem either though. Um, you want to be understood first.

That's true. Depends where I'm at in the whole process.

That's true. You could— depends on where you are on the emotional roller coaster.

Okay, you're gonna love this one.

Okay, I'm ready.

We want to teach resilience and a growth mindset.

Yes, for sure.

Okay, so I don't want to put you on the spot, but how would you explain growth mindset?

Um, am I— so it— I'll use the comparison example and say, am I a better me today than I was yesterday? I gotta beat myself. You know, my— one of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes is, life is knowing the toughest competition you'll ever face is yourself. And I think if we're talking about a growth mindset, it's can I improve? Am I always moving forward? You know, Tony Robbins says if you're green, you grow. You're ripe, you rot. You can't go backward. You either go backwards or forward, so you might as well go forward.

I didn't understand that. If you're green, you grow.

If you're ripe, you rot.

I don't understand that.

When it's ripe, the fruit falls off the tree, lands on the ground, and starts rotting.

Okay.

When it's green, it's growing and getting bigger.

Okay. So what are you comparing ripe to?

Okay, you can't— stagnation. You can't move forward, you can't stay still, you can't coast. You're either going forwards or back. You're— as soon as you try and coast, you start going backwards. Oh, I learned that lesson the hard way at a couple times in our business where I was like, I'm just gonna get to this goal, this number, and then I'm coasting for a while. And you can't because you start backsliding. So you always have to be pushing forward.

I don't think I've ever heard you say that before.

You learned something new.

I just learned something new. I want to tell you how I feel about growth mindset.

Please.

This has been one of the most important lessons of my life.

Okay.

Um, learning from failures, learning from setbacks, and not looking at it as a bad thing, but looking at it as I'm going to grow from this.

For sure. That's what you learn from it. You learn more from a failure than you do from a success.

Well, and if we look back at our lives, we've learned more from our failures our successes, for sure. So we want to pay attention to who is around them, what kind of support do they have around them. And I pay attention to, um, and I'm just using Lily as an example, this goes for all my kids, um, who I listen to the conversations with her friends. What are her friends saying to her? What are her friends' moms saying to her? What are her teachers saying to her? What are her coaches saying to her? And I'm gonna get emotional, but if you listen to how Lily's friends talk to her, how her friends' moms talk to her, how her coach talks to her, how her teachers talk to her— we obviously want more adults in their lives than just us as parents. And I mean, I get emotional listening to her on the phone with her friends. And you know, she got in the car after her audition with her friend and her friend was like, she's being way too hard on herself. She did such a good audition and she's tearing herself down. Oh, those are the people that you want to surround your kid— uplifting influences, people who are lifting your kid up and helping you to build their confidence.

100%.

But it could work the other way, and it could— and you could hear friends, etc., tearing your kid down, and we don't want that.

We do not.

We— so I, I do pay attention. What are they saying to each other? And I try to teach Lily how to be supportive to her friends and Ella and Max. But Ella and Max are older and kind of understand it more, I think.

Yes.

So, okay, so support. They also build confidence by hearing things from people other than their parents. You know that whole thing that they could hear it from us over and over and over again, but it means more if their coach says it.

Yeah.

Or if their teacher says it. I mean, I get so frustrated when Ella comes home and is like, my teacher said blah blah blah, and I'm like, yeah, I told you that already. Those are the kids that have modeling at home.

Oh, thanks, Kelly.

Kelly, those kids who have modeling at home who are supportive to my kids are so appreciative. I'm so appreciative. And the teachers like you at school and I hear what you guys say to your kids. And you know, the best teachers treat their students like they treat their own kids, and it just makes— it makes me so happy. I'm sending my kids to mostly moms at school who are treating them like their own kids, so it feels good as a parent for sure, right? Okay, open communication helps build their confidence. And like, when my kids come to me, I don't want to like shut them down or react right away. I want to listen in a non-reactive, non-judgmental tone. And I may be reacting inside, but I want them to feel supported and I want to build them up. So I will a lot of times save my reactivity for Seth.

Yeah, thank you for that, honey.

And then we talk it out. Yeah, right.

Yeah, that is the goal.

Well, because that's more appropriate than me reacting and being judgmental and reactive to our children.

100%.

And that helps build their confidence.

Yes.

Right. Okay, we want to celebrate their achievements. So, you know, we just got Max and Ella's report cards. Like, how are we going to celebrate? I don't have Lily's yet.

Right.

But I have Max and Ella's.

Yeah.

So, you know, celebrate. And even if it's just praise, it doesn't have to be a present, it doesn't have to be a dinner, it doesn't have to be a cupcake. But we praised Max and Ella today.

We did.

So, you know, I think that we should celebrate. We celebrated Max getting his license. We celebrate things and it helps to build their confidence. And we want to point out their uniqueness. What makes them unique and makes them feel special. And like I said, I'm just using Lily as an example. She's the youngest and we hear it the most from her about her older siblings and how smart they are and how they do everything and da da da da da. And so I'll point out things that are unique about her. For example, she cleans, organizes, and decorates better than any of us who live in this house. Yes, 100%. She will say, she will come into the family room and I'm sitting on the couch watching Real Housewives and she's like, Mom, I just cleaned the kitchen and the dining room. And I go in there and I'm like, holy crap, she cleans better than I do.

And we'll work on building your confidence, honey.

Or like, she came home after her audition and she was like, I don't know if I sang good enough, blah blah blah blah blah. And I said, well, I'm gonna tell you this, I bet you no one had the facial expressions that you had during your dance and I try to point out like what is unique about her and what makes her feel special.

Yes, she's very expressive.

Joey made Dean's List and I have the bragging rights, but he did all the work. Celebrate him for sure. Yes, I am so proud of Joey. Uh, Joey is doing awesome in college. Kristen is a proud mom. And yeah, we need to celebrate. We need to celebrate their successes, point them out, praise them, and We don't want to like always be la la la. Obviously there's constructive feedback to give our kids. We just want to be part of what is building their confidence. There's a lot of things that build their confidence, and one of the things I read was we want to set them up for success. And I think that what, what this article was saying was that sometimes parents' expectations are unrealistic, and if our expectations are unrealistic, we might set them up to fail. And that just kind of lowers their confidence. Are you following me?

Yeah, that's interesting.

So I didn't include that in my blog, but it was really interesting to read about that. Um, I have my own thoughts, but it's always interesting to do some research and see what other people are saying. So I will continue every single day for the rest of my life to work on my children's confidence. This is not something that I'm gonna achieve tomorrow. It's something that is, I think, a work in progress and something that we'll do forever.

Yeah, we work on ourselves forever too.

Oh well, and I feel like we're building our own confidence every day too.

It is a muscle.

And one of the things that builds my confidence that I did not write about is that if I'm scared to do something but I do it anyway, I feel stronger and braver and more confident.

Absolutely.

And every time I turn away from something because I'm scared, it's having the opposite effect.

Yeah.

So I always tell my kids, feel the fear, do it anyway, push yourself forward, right?

Should be a bumper sticker.

We'll make it a bumper sticker. So we're going to be patient, we're going to be kind, we're going to be understanding, we're going to be consistent, and we're going to realize that this is a work in progress every day. Do you have anything else you want to say about confidence?

I think you did a great job covering it.

I think that, um, we have a long way to go, but we're doing a good job.

Everybody starts somewhere.

Good, good so far.

Yes.

I think it's hard to be the youngest. You didn't talk about that at all, but as somebody who's the oldest, I never had insight into that before Lily.

Yes, I also have an older overachieving brother, so I do know what that's like.

So what does it feel like to have an overachieving sibling?

Ah, frustrating. I feel like, hey, if he wasn't here, I'd be good enough. If, um, I had a younger brother who— if I had someone who was dumber, you know, worse grades than me, they'd be happy with what I have now. I mean, my parents were really good about not comparing us, but you compare yourself anyway. Um, and you gotta eventually embrace, hey, we might be good at different things and that's okay. And I gotta embrace what I'm good at and not try and catch up to their shadow because at this point in this part in the life, I might not do that. It might not be my strong suit, what theirs is.

So when he was getting like hundreds and A's and going to UB Math, like how were you feeling and how were you doing?

I was not doing well in math. I was very frustrated. And then I was just like, oh, I'm just not a math person. I'm just not math. I'll just be the emotional brother and the actor, and that's what I'm gonna do. Until I got to college and took— I was, in addition to theater, was studying business and took my first business math class and realized you could use math to make money. And all of a sudden liked it a lot and then magically got really good at it. And obviously do math every single day as part of my profession. So I think it was— we weren't— I wasn't mentally competing with him anymore. And I found, like, I thought whatever it was, algebra or whatever, that was stupid and didn't understand. I'm never going to use this in real life, what's the point? Um, so I didn't try because I wasn't going to 100 anyway, so who cares? Until I found a reason to care about it. And I remember somebody taking AP classes in high school Yeah, they just weren't the math ones at that point.

Interesting. Very interesting journey.

Yes.

And I don't know what it's like. I continue to learn from you and Lily. I empathize with youngest children, and I almost think it's easier to be an oldest child.

I could, uh, that'd be— we could certainly continue that conversation. I don't know that there's a right answer to that question.

I would be curious what you think. I would love to do a survey. Is it— maybe it's just different, made different challenges, right?

You go first, so there's different expectations on you. Whatever you do is probably fine. No one has anybody to compare you to yet.

Hmm, that's interesting. I love, I love birth order. Maybe this is the next topic, right?

But older children soften their parents up, so the younger one has it easier. Like, you fought— my brother used to complain, I fought to get to do that thing at that age, and how come he's getting to do it and he was even younger than I was, you know?

So I did think about the fact that Lily gets things a lot younger than Max and Ella did. Yeah, so that is true.

Yep.

But it's hard to follow two overachieving siblings, for sure. And by the way, Lily is doing fantastic in school, but it depends who you're comparing yourself to, right? Right, right. So work in progress. We will continue to work on this, and, um, we're joining in your journey of parenting. We're all in this together, people, right? Yeah. Is Tayton on the podcast? I can't look.

Um, Tayton is not on here, but you want me to go grab my phone?

I'm gonna guess. Okay, I'm gonna take a wild guess. I forgot to look, but there is a new podcast on Friday.

Check it out.

I'm going to guess that I'm interviewing my producer who is no longer my producer because she got promoted, and it was an awesome conversation. You're going to love her, you're going to learn from her, and if I'm wrong, it's coming soon.

Then listen to whoever it is.

I need to put an alert on my phone to check before our live, but I hope you will tune in for the new podcast. Thank you for joining us this week. Thank you for joining the Winey Blues and Mom group, and thank you for joining the Winey Blues newsletter. And thank you to everybody who comments and, and joins in on the challenges. The February Valentine's challenge starts tomorrow. And oh, love you, Kristen! Thank you for joining. So tomorrow starts the Valentine challenge, so come find me because we're gonna do Valentine type, love type questions. And then I'm gonna give away Valentine prizes, so come find me. And how do they find the newsletter?

Uh, give you the link again and you can post it.

I keep posting it. If you need help, my friend asked me for help and I helped her find it. I will help you.

It's free, it's 3 times a week, it's awesome.

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Yes.

And then they show it to more people.

So help us help more parents and moms.

So, um, we look forward to talking to you more next week. Have a wonderful week.

Happy Whiny Blues Wednesday.

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